The Pirelli Calendar

As you can see from elsewhere on this website, there are several books devoted to the Pirelli Calendar. Here's why...



The Pirelli Calendar is a notoriously collectable item. Issued each year to employees and not for sale to the general public, the calendar invariably focuses on women in various states of undress. Sophie has shot two sets of pictures for the calendar, in 1998 (for 1999) and 2002 (for 2003).
The calendars come individually numbered, and are originally issued in cardboard packaging. For the 1999 calendar, the late Herb Ritts photographed 12 models, one for each month. The theme of the calendar was 'Women Through The Ages', with each model's photograph looking as though it had been taken at a certain year in history. Sophie was for the year 1900. Whilst the original calendar is obviously rare, the pictures included are not. "GQ" magazine issued a free supplement in late 1998 with re-prints of the pictures, including Sophie's and the 14th November 2004 issue of "Style" magazine reprinted the photo again to mark the release of a Pirelli Calendar book.
The 2003 calendar is something else. It is double sided (ie. each month appears twice) and also features additional pages with pictures only. There are no less than six pictures of Sophie, at least four of which are believed never to have been officially published elsewhere. Aside from this one, the other five were included in a montage on one page. "Esquire" magazine issued a free supplement in late 2002 with selected pictures from the calendar - only the picture shown here was included Sophie-wise. French mag "VSD" also issued their own 'version' of the calendar as a freebie around the same time. In addition, issue number 45 of the Italian mag "Sette" (2002) featured one of the other pictures. Interestingly, the picture included in this magazine hadn't been cropped, unlike the 'original' in the actual calendar, although the difference between the two is very slight. The 2003 calendar was also the first one to also feature male models.